The Holbein Canvas Scraper is a quality piece of equipment. It removes paint without damaging the canvas. It is sharp but not too sharp (though if you aren’t careful you can cut yourself) and the metal is hard, thick in the middle and strong so you can really push and pull at it and it doesn’t flex or feel weak. It is 9 inches long, double edged, has a deep tang, 2 rivets, and a beautiful wood handle.
Holbein Canvas Scraper
Acrylic paints are made from pigment mixed with acrylic resin. They are water-based paints which means that they can be mixed with water to thin them down and you clean your brushes with water, there is no need for solvents.
Acrylics dry quickly, which many people like but you can add a retarder medium that slows down the drying if you wish to work more slowly or blend your colours longer. Because acrylics dry so fast, squeeze only a little paint out of a tube at a time or you may find it dries up on your palette before you have used it. You can use a spray bottle to spray a fine mist over the paint regularly to keep it moist on your palette. You can also purchase a “stay-wet” palette or construct one yourself by wrapping your palette with cling film and including a wet sponge inside.
Acrylics are very versatile and can be used in thin, watery glazes to look like watercolour or more thickly to look like oils. They are self-sealing, so they are waterproof when dry. As with oils and watercolours, there is a big difference in the quality of the colour between artists’ grade paints and student grade paints. The student paints have fillers and imitation pigments. The artists’ colours are purer and more vibrant, and will mix in a more predictable way, as well as being much more concentrated.
The Acrylic Painting department on the Jackson’s Art Supplies website.
Like many good quality oil paints Rembrandt Artists Oil Colours have two versions of their two main whites: zinc white and titanium white made with safflower oil and also a version of each made with linseed oil.
Rembrandt Oil Colour
Linseed oil produces a strong film but does yellow somewhat in time. It is durable enough to be used in the under layers of a painting. Safflower oil (some brands use poppy or another non-yellowing drying oil) produces a less durable film so it shouldn’t be used for the lower layers, but shows virtually no yellowing, so it is great for the final phase of the painting where the yellowing matters most anyway.
Zinc white is semi-transparent, so you can lighten a transparent colour without making it completely opaque. Titanium white is opaque so has good coverage and a few drops added to a transparent colour will make it opaque without lightening it very much. (There have been rumours that zinc white is brittle so prone to cracking, but this isn’t clear.)
Many oil painters have all four whites in their paintbox as well as a lead white.
Frequently asked question:
I don’t understand Sizing, Priming and Grounds for oil painting.
Canvas must be sealed (sized) from oil paint to prevent rotting. You can use rabbit skin glue or acrylic medium to seal the surface. Then you can apply one or more layers of primer or ground.
This can be oil primer, acrylic primer or any of the gessos depending on the texture of the surface you require for painting and the paint you will be using.
Acrylic primer (sometimes called acrylic gesso) will do both jobs at once- sealing (sizing) and providing a ground.
Paper must be primed as well before you paint oil colour on it. This is both to protect the surface from oxidizing (slowly rotting) because of the oil and to ensure a stable paint film because the paper would soak the oil out of the paint (it leaves a ring of oil) and there wouldn’t be enough binder left in the paint to form a stable film. Most artists apply 2 or more thin coats of primer. If the paper is thick enough (300gsm or greater) you can probably do just one side; if it is more lightweight than that it is best to apply it to both sides of the paper as the first side will curl and doing the second side after the first has dried will flatten it back out.
Primers on the Jackson’s Art Supplies website.
priming canvas
Winsor Artists’ Colours are on offer at Jackson’s Art Supplies until August 31st.
40% off RRP – Winsor & Newton Artists’ Oil Colour
Up to 40% off RRP – Winsor & Newton Artists’ Acrylic Colour
Plus when you register on our new website you will be emailed a 10% discount code you can use to complete the order, making it an even better value!
Winsor Artists Colours
Oil Paint Bars
Oil bars, also called pigment sticks or oil sticks, are artists’ oil colour in a handy stick format. Not to be confused with oil pastels, they are made by adding just enough wax to the oil paint to make it form into a stick and they should be thought of as you would oil colour. They are also much larger than an oil pastel. Since it is oil paint any exposed part dries into a paint film and each time you use them they must be peeled back at the tip to exposed the paint. This film can be deterred by keeping the bars tightly covered. R&F sticks come in individual bags and Winsor & Newton bars come in individual plastic boxes.
Great for oil painters who love to draw, they are superb for drawing on canvas either as the prelimary step in a painting that is continued with tube colour or they can be used for the entire painting process. If you wish to use a painting medium you can use solvents as normal or a transparent oil bar. Both Sennelier and R&F make a transparent painting medium bar.
Jackson’s stocks three makes of oil bars each with their own characteristics of softness/hardness and drying variances. You may want to try some colours for your palette from each make and then replace your colours as needed with the make that you have found you prefer. Each of the makes also have introductory sets to provide a good starter selection.
R&F Pigment Sticks
Sennelier Oil Paint Sticks
Winsor & Newton Oil Bars
Turner Acryl Gouache
Comparing acrylics, designer’s gouache and acrylic gouache:
Normal acrylics are quick-drying, water-mixable and vary in opacity depending on pigment (about half of the colours are transparent) and they usually have a satin finish.
Normal gouache is opaque, matte watercolour so like watercolour it is resoluble, not water resistant.
Acrylic Gouache is part of both of these. It is all opaque and all matte, quick-drying, water-mixable and water resistant once dry (so multiple layers can be over-painted with no bleeding or streaking).
So it is opaque, matte acrylic.
Turner Acrylic Gouache 24-set
The 219 colours available:
Original Colours: A full range of basic and intermediate opaque colours, as well as three mixing colours. The mixing white, magenta and violet are made with lightfast pigments and translucent white for more precise colour mixing.
Pastel Colours: Designed to extend the original colour range, these unique light colours are perfect for creating clean, subtle tones in your work.
Greyish Colours: A range of elegant “greyish” pastel colours, perfect for subtle expression. Quiet tones that can be used without making your work too dark or murky.
Japanesque Colours: This selection of beautiful, sophisticated tones are formulated with fine powders which give them a unique slightly textured matt finish.
Metallic Colours: A series of metallic shades which are slightly more translucent than the regular colours, giving a sense of luminance and depth to your painting.
Pearl Colours: These effect colours have a refined pearlescent lustre. The last 6 pearl colours are “interference” tones which are translucent and will vary in appearance depending on ground colour and viewing angle.
Lamé Colours: This series of colours have sparkly metallic particles suspended in the paint. When painted over a black or dark ground, the colours will shine out. Application with a knife or spatula is recommended.
Lumi Colours: Brilliant fluorescent colours for bold effects, which will illuminate under ultra-violet “black light”.
by Mishina Masako using Turner Acryl Gouache in pearl, metallic and lame colours
by Shimoda Masakatsu using Turner Acryl Gouache in luminous colours
by Iwasaki Eri using Turner Acryl Gouache in Japanesque colours
Video showing use of Turner Acryl Gouache
The lightfast permanence varies – most colours are very permanent or permanent. A few colours have flourescent pigments and they are fugitive. The obvious ones are the glowing and the lame colours. But oddly there are about 10 other unexpectedly fugitive colours. So John is adding the lightfastness and pigment info to each colour on our website and we will also make a pdf of the colour chart and upload that soon.
Jackson’s Aqua Oils
We have worked tirelessly with paint specialists to develop our new water-mixable oil paint range. Aqua Oil’s range consists of 40 vibrant colours that mix well with other water-mixable oils. Use with water-mixable oil mediums to extend colour and increase transparency. Jackson’s Aqua Oil are low odour and kind to your hands. Ideal for those who’d like to avoid paint fumes and harsh solvents without having to compromise the quality of their materials. We urge you to give them a try!
Rarely on offer! The resin-based oil colour from Schmincke – Mussini – uses customised oil blends and resin to achieve particularly brilliant colour, especially suited to glazing. The use of resin also results in even surface drying. On offer with an additional 20% off until August 23rd.
Mussini Oil Colour
The uniqueness of these fine professional artists’ colours stems from using the old masters’ practice of combining selected artists’ oil with natural resin. Different variants of linseed oil, safflower oil, poppy-seed oil and sunflower oil are combined with the most suitable natural dammar resin.
The dammar resin crystals are finely incorporated into the artists’ oils and these enhance the brilliance of the colour layers. The addition of resin gives Mussini another advantage: it dries more evenly, reducing the danger of wrinkling and cracking during the drying process. The chemical drying process which begins on the surface via oxygen uptake is balanced by the solvent content in the dammar solution which evaporates from inside.
It goes without saying that they contain only the best traditional artists’ pigments together with several outstanding newly developed artists’ pigments, each in the highest possible concentrations resulting in artists’ colours of the utmost brilliance and purity. Thanks to the particularly extensive range of pigments suitable for glazing, their fine processing and the specially adapted formulations, Mussini provides for fine glaze colouring with outstanding brilliance, luminosity and light depth.
Jackson’s Black Hog Brushes are possibly the most popular oil brush we stock! These beautiful and durable brushes are an excellent value at any time, but for a limited time they are an even better price at 30% off!
Offers end August 23rd.
In addition to our own Jackson’s brand of canvases, watercolour paper, sketchbooks, mounts, accessories like brush cases and pastel blenders, sculpture supplies, easy-assemble framing, painting mediums and primers, silk cloth, academy easels, an extensive array of high quality brushes, Indian ink, printmaking inks and our own brand of pastels – Jackson’s do paints as well! Jackson’s watercolours, acrylics, oils and aqua oils are all artist quality comparable to the top of the range in those mediums.
(The two most popular Jackson’s products are the black hog brushes and the oil colour.)
Facebook Page
Twitter Feed
Youtube Channel